


What happens on Lassiter Three Stays on Lassiter Three

by karrenia_rune



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: F/M, Something Made Them Do It, Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-17 00:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3508160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune





	What happens on Lassiter Three Stays on Lassiter Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Tribune and Fireworks Productions. It is not mine.  
Written the Fourth Rare Ship Swap.

"What happens on Lassiter Three Stays on Lassiter Three" 

“You checked the coordinates you were given, correct?” Rommie asked.

“Of course, I did, Rom-doll,” Harper cheerfully replied.

“Then would you care to explain why we are currently in orbit over a planet that is nowhere near where we were supposed to rendezvous with Captain Hunt?"

“Hmm, that’s odd,” Harper mused.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the ship began to buck and heave like a live animal and despite his best efforts, they began to plummet at a curiously rapid but controlled rate. Rommie remarked, standing behind his chair, remarked that the phenomena could have been caused due to ship in orbit locking onto the Eureka Maru with a tractor beam or more unlikely they were caught in a gravitational whirlpool. Either way, Seamus Harper was not in position to argue the matter.

Their controlled descent finally came to an end and the ship was rocked from side to side. Harper might have fallen out of his seat if he hadn’t already been strapped in. As it was, he felt he could imagine how an Old Earth tetherball would feel if it had been knocked from side to side and every which way one too many times.

“So, what now?” he asked, “or should I not ask. Do you remember those holo-vids I mentioned, Rommie?”

“Yes, and if memory serves, nine times out of ten, statistically speaking, the inevitable conclusion following on the heels of such a statement ends badly.”

 

“Yeah,” he replied. “So, where are we? I don’t think we’re going anyplace anytime soon."

“We should send a distress beacon to the Andromeda, let them know that we will be late making the rendezvous,”

“I suppose so,” Harper griped, but maybe we should get out and get a look around, too.”

“Agreed,” Rommie nodded and suiting action to words began to rapidly press keys on the still functioning control console that would send a command to the Eureka Maru’s computer and send out an automated distress beacon keyed to the Andromeda Ascendant to inform of their position and their situation.

With that done, she glanced at Harper. “What now?”

“I guess, we should get out and take a look around. “I’d like to find out whether or not that gravitational tractor beam was naturally occurring or not.”

“If not?” asked Rommie softly.

“Then, we’ll, ah cross that proverbial bridge when come to it,” he replied.

***  
The exit doors hissed aside with their customary pneumatic whoosh and the pair emerged from the ship, carrying supplies in the form of water, provisions, hand lamps, and a blaster. 

Rommie could make do without much of the above but Harper saw the layer of the dust that coated the view screen monitors as well as the ship’s exterior; the way he had it figured, after a while he would need his own supply of water and maybe food if they were going to be stuck on this ball of rock for an extended period of time.

The landscape was a long baked plain that was flat for as far as the eye could see in each of the cardinal points, and the sun was a fuzzy ball in the sky. 

Harper turned to Rommie and flashed her one of his trade-marked off-kilter grins, “Hey, Rommie, don’t’ forget where we parked.”

“I shall do so, but what’s the saying again? Oh, yes. Any crash you can walk away from is a good crash.”

Harper cocked his head to one side thinking that over for a moment, “Please tell me that you don’t allow Dylan to actually pilot the ship.”

Rommie smiled an impish grin, “Very well then, I won’t tell you.”

Harper smiled, “I supposed I deserved that. Which way should we go? It all looks pretty much the same to me.”

She replied: “It’s just a little over ten in the morning judging by the position of the sun in the sky and my internal chronometer concurs. I suggest we head west that will leave most of the day to work with.”  
** As they walked in a westward direction the landscape did not change much, but it also was not as flat as it appeared, rising and dipping beneath their booted feet. It was getting hotter and Harper at least was feeling the heat, his sweat making his cargo pants and loud colorful shirts stick to his torso like a second skin. He was on the verge of suggesting that they give this up and head back to the ship when they stumbled upon the oasis.

“Ah, I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for, do you? But it sure does look inviting."

“Might I point out that it could merely be an optical illusion brought on by prolonged heat exposure.”

“Interesting hypothesis,” mulled Harper, adding, “I guess there’s only one way to test that theory.”

“Harper, be careful!” Rommie yelled,“ It could be a trap, or dangerous,” she trailed off. 

“I’m fine!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

When it appeared that the oasis with Harper for company was more than confident of not only its being not to mention sustainability and showed no signs of disappearing into thin air Rommie at last approached it with more caution than her companion had shown.

Harper was down by a narrow stream splashing water on his face and running wet hands through his sweaty hair. ”I still can’t figure why this place hasn’t been found by anyone, and what caused the phenomena that knocked us for a loop, but I’m beginning to think it was naturally occurring.”

“I concur; we haven’t yet seen any evidence to support the theory that a sentient population with access to technology could produce such an effect and remain undiscovered.”

“They could be underground, we haven’t thought of that,” offered Harper. “But I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy going to the trouble of digging down through all of that hard-packed ground to find out.”

“No, I suppose not. We could stay here long enough to get some rest and then we’ll head back to the Maru. By then the distress beacon should have had enough time to get through to the Andromeda.”

"Fine by me,” Harper sighed, stretched and stood up. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll rest then and you can ah, do recharge…”

Rommie smiled, “Of course. In fact, I will take the first watch.”

Harper had lain down under the shelter of something that resembled a palm tree and curled up and closed his eyes. In his headlong rush to the river flanked on either side by odd cylindrical spindly trees he had knocked loose a handful of seed pods and the heat-borne wind began to waft all over the place.

One of the pods swirled around and coated Rommie from head to foot in reddish-brown dust. She began to analyze it for future reference, but then stopped without even realizing why. The red dust was everywhere now, covering the trees, the spindly green brown shrubs and grass and giving the entire oasis a kind of shimmering gleam. Rommie tried to reason it through, attempted to uncertain its properties and whether or not it was harmful or not. Instead, she left her post at the edge of the oasis and crept over where her companion lay curled up in sleep.

She crouched down and turned him over. He too had a glassy distracted look in his blue eyes, and he too was coated in the same reddish dust. Harper was awake, yet at the same time, he felt as if another part of being were in the midst of a waking dream; however, his dreams were never this vivid.

He reached out for her, and they pulled together with another kind of magnetic attraction that had nothing to do with spatial phenomena and began to tentatively kiss, locking lips and running his fingers through her hair. 

Rommie, while the clinical part of her mind told her that this was not something that she should be doing, that it was illogical, another part, a part that she’d be coming to terms with that she could be more than just an android, more than an avatar for her ship and her crew, told logic to shut up and shoved all the counter-arguments to raw emotion to a back corner of her mind.

Harper, too, was dealing with the raw emotion of his own, and they began to kiss, and nuzzle, and soon Rommie had his clothes off and was tracing the edge of his neck with her fingers and, tracing the lines of where his dataport had been implanted into his skin. Harper shuddered beneath her hands, and she gently calmed him down.

 

It could have been minutes, or even hours later when the effect of the alien spores wore off, neither had much on in the way of clothing and both felt a mix of a different set of emotions than what they each had experienced hours beforehand. 

Harper got his clothes back on and he turned around so that she could do the same. He’d seen her naked before, but that this was different somehow, although what made it different she could not have explained just now. It was the principle of the gesture,’ she thought.

“Harper,” she said aloud.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.” 

“I,” she began and then trailed off, uncertain what she wished to say.

“I think we should head back to the ship, see if they’ve picked up on the beacon yet.”

“Yes, agreed,” she replied and they set out back the way they had come.”

Harper, normally voluble to the point that his friends often wished that he came with an off-switch was uncommonly quiet on the walk back, and there were any number of things he wanted to say to her but each time he ran them over in his head he discarded them as quickly thinking that when they came out of his mouth they would sound trite or worse, dumb, or not what he’d meant at all.

They were less than three meters from the ship when he stopped and she came over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Harper, you know that I shall always respect you.”

“I, of course, Rommie, right back at you,” Harper rapidly quipped.

She nodded and sighed, adding,“It’s just that, what happened, it is so, strange.” 

“Hey, it’s not like I was, you know, trying to ah, well, you know. Tell you what?”

“What?” she said, taking a step back and removing her hand from his shoulder.

“If anyone asks what happens to us here, just tell them anything, cause to modify an Old Earth saying, what happens on Lassiter Three Stays on Lassiter Three.”

“Is that the designation for this planet?” she asked.

“No, it’s actually LSSIIII, but it sounded better that way.”

“Indeed,” and she offered Harper another impish grin. “Shall we go say if there’s a response to our beacon?”

“Yeah, and let’s hope they can get the Maru off the ground or Beka is going kill me.”

“Then she shall have to go through me first,” Rommie said with a grin.

“You are aware that Beka takes her ownership of that crate very seriously, right?”

“Of course,” Rommie replied.

“Oh,” was all Harper said and they both went back into the Maru where the beacon had indeed been answered and they were informed to sit tight until they could be picked up.


End file.
